"The central doctrine of Christianity, then, is not that God is a bastard. It is, in the words of the late Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe, that if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you."--Terry Eagleton

"It is impossible for me to say in my book one word about all that music has meant in my life. How then can I hope to be understood?--Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice."--Bryan Stevenson

Sunday, December 16, 2012

A Truly Modest Proposal

In the wake of Friday's mass killing at an elementary school in
Connecticut, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Sunday that she plans
to introduce an assault weapons ban bill on the first day of the new
Congress.

"I'm going to introduce in the Senate, and the same bill will be
introduced in the House -- a bill to ban assault weapons," Feinstein
said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Tax the ammunition. It was Sen. Daniel Moynihan's solution, and it's still the only one that works. Make it more expensive to fire a gun than to purchase one. Dry up the amount of ammunition available, in all its forms (including reloading elements like buckshot and bullets). It's still available, so it's not like a ban, a prohibition. But the black market is not going to make it cheaper; not for something people will want so badly.

Tax the ammunition. You may have a right to bear arms; you certainly don't have a right to fire them.

New York Sen. Chuck Schumer (D) said on Sunday that when entering the
gun control debate, the left must "admit there is a Second Amendment."

"We've been gridlocked," he said on CBS's Face The Nation.
"We need a new paradim because both sides are in the corner and they
could come to the middle. Those of who are pro-gun control have to admit
that there is a Second Amendment right to bear arms... once we
establish that there is a constitutional right to bear arms we should
have the right admit, and maybe they'll be more willing to admit, that
no amendment is absolute after all."

This is the paradigm shift. There is a 2nd Amendment. You do have a right to bear arms. You do not have a right to shoot them.